Release notes for API Connect for GraphQL as a Service

Date: 28-July-2025

Support for JWT-based authentication using service instance credentials

You can now log into API Connect for GraphQL as a Service using the service instance associated with your subscription. This new JWT-based authentication method enables seamless, secure access without requiring user credentials. For more information, see stepzen login using instance ID.

MCP support

In this release, we’re introducing Model Context Protocol (MCP) support in IBM API Connect for GraphQL as a Service. MCP enables customers to streamline and secure communication between deployed GraphQL APIs and backend data sources, supporting efficient, scalable, and agent-based architectures.

This release also adds support for defining GraphQL tools using the @tool directive. These tools can be securely executed via the MCP method tools/call, allowing you to expose only the required schema fields while pruning sensitive data. This approach enables fine-grained, secure access to enterprise data for applications and AI agents. For more information, see directive@tool.

Date: 20-March-2025

JDBC service updates
  • Connection Pool cache enhancements
    • Maximum connections per JDBC URL: This release introduces a feature to manage the number of connections per JDBC URL in the connection pool cache, optimizing connection management and resource utilization. The system now tracks number of connections per specific JDBC URL, ensuring they stay within configurable limits to reduce latency and enhance overall performance.
  • High-Precision timestamp support: Added support for timestamps with up to 9-digit precision for nanoseconds, ensuring full accuracy is maintained during processing.
  • Bug fixes
    • Improved error response handling: Removed stack traces from error responses and replaced them with user-friendly error messages for better clarity and security.
Introspection updates
  • Multi-CURL support: This release introduces significant enhancements to multi-CURL support, including:
    • Handling common configurations: Improved handling of shared configurations across multiple CURL requests, ensuring consistency and reducing redundancy.
    • Support for reporting messages: Added functionality to report messages and status updates for better visibility and debugging during multi-CURL operations.
    • Extensive testing infrastructure: Implemented a robust testing framework to validate multi-CURL functionality, ensuring reliability and performance under various scenarios.
  • Added Oracle JSON support in introspection and JDBC proxy: Enhanced SDL (Schema Definition Language) introspection to support mapping Oracle JSON data types to GraphQL JSON scalars.
  • Important dependency upgrades
    • Upgraded Axios to 1.8.2 in the /support/node/prsforrelease directory.
    • Upgraded Netty library version to 4.1.118 to address security vulnerability
    • Upgraded Snowflake JDBC driver to 3.23.1

Date: 12-November-2024

Support for Oracle and Db2 databases

With this enhancement, you can seamlessly connect to Oracle and Db2 databases and build GraphQL APIs. For more information, see Connecting an Oracle database and Connecting a Db2 database.

Support for JDBC-compatible databases

You can now use any JDBC-compatible database as a data source for your GraphQL API by extending it with the @dbquery directive. For more information, see Connecting JDBC supported databases.

Date: 13-June-2024

The config.yaml file now supports configuration for GraphQL settings. For example: 

deployment:
  graphql:
    introspection: false
    pretty: false

For more information, see Using GraphQL settings.

Date: 10-April-2024

  • Enhanced support for argument mapping in the sequence directive now enables specific step fields to be referenced by index for argument assignment.

    Previously, argument mapping in a sequence's step field allowed for field retrieval based on their names from the nearest preceding step. With this update, users can now specify the desired step by its index, starting from 0, facilitating more precise field selection within the sequence. For example, using the syntax arguments: {name:"a" field:"§1.f"} retrieves the value of field f from the output of the second step for assignment to the corresponding argument in subsequent steps.

Date: 26-March-2024

  • GraphQL server enhancements
    • Enhanced support for extending schemas in GraphQL schema files
    • Includes the specifiedBy directive for scalars in the GraphQL specification
    • Interfaces implementing interfaces (GraphQL spec)
    • Supports assigning input fields in argument mapping
    • Enabled support for JSONata with supplies routing
    • Provided support for converting enums to string and JSON types
    • Provided support for scalar conversion to string and JSON types
    • REST enhancements
      • Added support for the REST directive on fields returning interfaces
      • REST now supports MTLS (Mutual TLS) with root authority
      • REST now supports TLS certificates, part 6c
    • JWT integration
      • Enabled the availability of JWT claims in routing conditions
    • Database support
      • Enabled support for JSON with MSSQL